I felt silly after realizing what I thought would be water soluble, wasn’t. So, I decided to look into finding a general rule to go by and lucky me, I found info on that as well as their exceptions. I’m not certain though if these are the ONLY exceptions, that’s always going to be hard to pin point since our understanding of science is still fairly primitive.

What’s the difference among solute, solvent, solution, and solubility?

Solubility means the how well something (solute) can dissolve in something else (solvent). Usually, we call the disolvee, the solute since it is less (mnemonic acute and solute). The disolver is the one usually with greater volume, so that’s called the solvent. Together, the solvent and solute combine give you a solution.

For example, we can add salt, NaCl, a (solute) into water H2O (solvent). If we put the NaCl into our water, it will dissolve by breaking into its elements Na and Cl. The feasibility of them dissolving (solubility) is about —. Other examples of solutes in water are sugar, food coloring, alcohol, etc.

What aren’t water soluble and the exception?

1. Metal oxides are NOT soluble in water EXCEPT alkali metal oxides and oxides with Ba, Ca, and Sr.

oxides – those with oxygen (O)

metal oxides – metal with O

alkali metal oxides – alkali metal + O

2. Hydroxides (-OH) are NOT soluble, EXCEPT if it were with alkali metals or Ba, Ca, and Sr